£2,500 has unexpectedly appeared in my bank account overnight.

[Hitplay]

The info line only states “Funds Transfer”. It’s into our joint account and husband knows nothing about it either.

I’m in work shortly so won’t be able to call the bank for a few hours.

Anyone want to proffer fun ideas as to why it’s there, and what to do with it*?

*Other than not get attached to it as I’d imagine it’ll be taken back sharpish if it is a banking error.

Contact the bank - email or secure message will do - you don’t need to phone them. They will sort it out quickly, and if they don’t then put it in a savings account (only if you have one linked to that account) so you don’t accidentally spend it whilst it is sorted.

No way will you be allowed to keep it, it is essentially theft if you spend it

That was from me! You're welcome, happy Easter 🐣 🐰

My DH got £300 in his bank account recently. Didn't know what it was or what for. About 2 weeks later he got a letter from Barclaycard (which he no longer has) saying they calculated charges/interest incorrectly and they had paid him a sum.

So you never know..

Ooh exciting

I rang the bank and they weren’t massively helpful.

It was a payment from a customer of another bank so they can’t/won’t tell me who.

They haven’t received a reversal request but will let me know when they do.

@AlexaShutUp

This happened to me a few months ago. I even had a thread about it on here. It was someone who had transferred the money to my account in error.

I remembered this - I was just going to say "someone else had this recently".

@SpaceFarce

It’ll be some hapless idiot that’s not double checked the account details when transferring to a friend or family member or something.

It’s me - I’m the hapless idiot. I did this about 2 years ago. I even got an error message to say some of the info (maybe account name? Can’t remember) didn’t match, and did I want to continue? And bizarrely I was so sure I was right, I just clicked ‘yes’. The lovely person I transferred to was honest and gave it back to me - luckily it wasn’t in the thousands but I’d have still been noticeably out of pocket if they hadn’t!

My BANK was once the hapless idiot! Woke up one morning to £8k disappeared from my savings, just gone… turned out the cashier hadn’t typed the right account details for the origin account and had, like you, clicked “yes” even though it was noooooooo. Took ages to get it back as well, and they refused to call it theft, “because it was returned to you”. Me: yeah, it had to be returned to me because you nicked it.

That happened to two friends. Both times it was because they had the same names as other contractors and the payments departments had put it through without checking the other details.

Don't spend it but don't lose all hope yet. One friend reported it and was just told to forget about it - we think she might have been the innocent beneficiary of a fraud by someone in the payments department who put it in the wrong "wrong" account IYSWIM. It was at least 20 years ago and I think she's safe.

The other friend got an officious email from someone in payments demanding the money back immediately. It might not have been fraud but just them trying to cover up mistakes. My friend said they could have the money back but only in instalments because she'd spent it and there was no way she was going to go into hardship for them.

I got a panicked email from someone who gave me the wrong banking details. Of course I was going to pay it back and I didn't like the suggestion she thought I wouldn't especially seeing it was her mistake. I couldn't get it back and certainly wasn't going to pay her again so asked her to let the bank deal with it and I'd do what they said.

It turned out it had gone into the ether because none of the other details matched and people make mistakes all the time.

It’s still there.

Was fully expecting someone to realise their error over the weekend and to get a call from the bank yesterday.

My parents in law had this for 3k and it was a scam. A few days later, 'the bank' called to say it was an error and they'd need to remove it. They asked for security info in order to do so. Luckily we were there at the time but honestly it was so believable. We called the bank directly and they'd made no such call. The money disappeared from the account later (not sure how?). The bank said it was becoming a common scam.